Africa
Education
Joburg
South Africa
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Under the microscope in the last few weeks has been the issue of violence against women and children, with a number of perturbing reports that have documented various cases of kidnap, rape and in most cases deaths perpetrated by men, some as part of alleged syndicates of human trafficking. This has expectedly been met with backlash from the public including high profile individuals and social commentators, with some questioning the absence of Ubuntu in the context of a post 94 South Africa, but which Ubuntu is this really?
Perhaps a more fundamental task is to ask if the question of justice is one that forms a constitutive part of Ubuntu along with concepts such as humanness, mutual respect and a primary commitment to communal values or not. After this, we should ask if this is the Ubuntu that is said to be expressed in post 94 South Africa through the constitution and other legislative and political avenues. If the answer to the first question is in the affirmative, then it we should begin to look at through which Ubuntu are we calling for the repair of our country. Ubuntu ethics espouse truthfulness and mutual respect among other important principles; therefore, if it is true that colonialism was an unethical and their wars unjust, then we should demand demonstrative programs in accordance with the said set of values to begin a true process of historical redress.
The number colonialism did on us in Africa is unspeakable. Of the things colonialism forcefully and violently implemented was the recreation of gender roles in indigenous social lives. This dynamic has only served to thrash tension in the face of previously harmonious gender relations pre-colonialism. Through media and other platforms of reach, including by gun and scripture, the African woman were culturally violated and hypersexualised. Their sovereignty was stolen, dignity destroyed and made readily vulnerable. Think of Sarah Baartman and you will not struggle to suss out contemporary examples of the same fundamental portrayal. It is on this collective platform, with other factors thrown in there, that the women suffer lack of respect and consequent violence from males and in some instances even females.
What the current scourge shows is that the Ubuntu that is oft referred to has not been seriously implemented and only exists in theory if at all. As Professor Mogobe Ramose posits that epistemology without practice means nothing, we can further propose that Ubuntu without practice means nothing. If the aim of Ubuntu is to create and maintain harmony and balance in human relationships, then there has been an obvious failure to examine the nature of Ubuntu Philosophy and drive an earnest implementation of it. If Ubuntu is used to mask historical injustices, as is widely the case, instead of working to repair them, then it is a perspective of Ubuntu that warrants our shun and rejection in favour of a one wherein justice and truth are constitutive. This kind of Ubuntu only smacks of an outsider’s perspective of the philosophy, which always tends to fall short of grasping the full meaning of which the indigenous Bantu and Khoi & San peoples can enjoy.
I posit that the current project of democracy is either inadvertently devoid of the tools to analyse Ubuntu in depth or is deliberately negating integral elements of Ubuntu, thus metamorphosing it into an Ubuntu which is not. We should always link Ubuntu with the project of historical justice & reparations, and from thereon implement practical systems that will serve to restore lost cultural values and reclaim Ubuntu as our intellectual property; an Ubuntu that is unique and has its own philosophic character tied with the African experience.
Author :
Katlego Mereko
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